Cantor: Stimulus funds should go to sewers and not be squandered

During the presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama promised the voters hope and the change we need. Now, if the congressional leadership has their way, that hope may well turn to despair and prolong this recession.

It’s not that the nearly trillion-dollar economic stimulus package currently being debated in Congress lacks sufficient dollars to positively impact the economy. However, how that stimulus package is spent will play a role in determining the length of this recession and how quickly the economy grows.

This is critical since the stimulus funding will come from borrowing, increasing the national debt beyond $10 trillion and creating a budget deficit of between $700 billion and a trillion dollars. These are huge numbers never before seen in federal fiscal policy. So the choice of where to spend the money is extremely important.

The idea of a stimulus to fund infrastructure is a good one. Building and repairing roads will create new jobs in construction and in manufacturing the construction materials, with secondary jobs created in accounting, legal and financial services. While these jobs essentially represent one-shot revenue, they are important in their dual roles of preventing the economy from getting worse or accelerating improvement.

The real infrastructure energizer for the economy are sewers, which are critical to revitalizing Long Island’s downtowns. Sewer capacity allows for the building height and density necessary to create the affordable housing to keep our young folks here.

The initial economic impact would come from the jobs and materials to construct the sewers with a permanent source of economic activity generated by the young people occupying the new housing. This would revitalize our economy by providing income taxes from their wages and a fresh supply of new home buyers, with a secondary economic impact from spending for home furnishings.

Rep. Steve Israel, D-Huntington, understands this economic imperative and has advocated that $14 billion be available for sewers.

Sewers are no-brainers, but because the stimulus package has been watered down by using the funds for noninfrastructure spending including health care, Medicaid and education, sewers have been kicked to the curb. This is a path for stifling maximum economic impact. While important for quality of life, this is at best one shot revenue that will do little to bring the country out of recession.

First impressions are important. Decisions are hard. This is why President Obama won his presidency.